Eight Months Old

Elodie turned eight months old on Christmas Day! She is around 18 - 18.5 pounds, and continues to look longer and leaner to me. We have our next doctor appointment in a month for her nine-month checkup, so we'll get our next set of stats then.

She continues to be such a good, sweet baby. I REALLY feel so lucky to have her, and everyone that spends any time with her comments that she is such a happy baby :). She's still sleeping well (typically from about 8pm - 7am), eating well (she has eaten EVERYTHING we've given her so far), and has been pretty healthy over the last month.

Elodie with Ama & Akong on Christmas

In the past month, she got to spend a lot of time with her Ama and Akong (Grandma and Grandpa in Taiwanese), since Eric's parents visited and stayed with us in San Mateo for three weeks in December. We then spent the past week (Dec 27 - Jan 2) in Irvine with my family. Eric and I have been spoiled with plenty of good home cooking, and Elodie has been spoiled with more attention than she normally gets, but I'm also happy to get back to our usual routine as a family of three back at home now, to start off the new year.

Elodie (and Eric and I) also survived my first big work travel trip. I was gone from Tuesday - late Friday earlier in December, when I went to Orlando for training. Eric's parents timed their visit so they could be here during my trip away, so Eric had extra help with Elodie while I was gone. They thankfully all did well without me, though Elodie wouldn't drink much from a bottle when she was at home. She easily drinks 5 - 6 ounces from each bottle at daycare, but she knows that at home she normally gets the real deal from her mama, so she protested and only drank 1 - 2 ounces during her morning and night feedings at home. Since she's also eating solids twice a day, we weren't too concerned, but now we know what to expect when I travel again.

The training trip away from home was good, but also difficult for me in terms of the logistics around pumping regularly and bringing the milk home, etc. PwC has great policies for nursing moms and allows you to overnight ship breastmilk home if you're traveling for work (if you want to). I decided to try that out during my Orlando trip, but since I was so far away in Orlando, it cost $150 for me to ship two days worth of milk home! (Not my money! And the ice probably weighed more than the milk itself haha.) Ama told Elodie: "You're drinking the most expensive milk in the world!"

Physical developments:

Crawling at Inman Family Winery

Elodie started crawling this month! By 7.5 months old, she was regularly army crawling around. She is now getting much faster at it, but still army crawling -- slithering around on her belly instead of on all fours with her knees on the ground.

She still doesn't have any teeth yet, but I had a dream last night that she grew all her teeth in overnight haha. So maybe soon... No teeth hasn't slowed down her love for eating, so we're not worried.

Current likes:
[I wish I had more photos of Elodie enjoying these activities, but I don't seem to have many photos this month. I have some videos, but they're harder to view sometimes.]

- Jumping / Jumperoo. She has gotten really active in the past month, and does not like to sit still. She loves to "jump" (bounce up and down by bending her knees), and loves being in the Jumperoo that we borrowed from a friend. Video:

- Oldies music like Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. She seems to really enjoy music from the 60's like "Sherry" and "Big Girls Don't Cry" haha

- Playing with her wobbly stacking balls. She can play with these balls forever, like a kitten with a ball of yarn. She loved watching Eric flip them in this video:

She also still enjoys playing peek-a-boo and interacting with dogs.

Current dislikes:
- Sitting still / sitting on her butt. She's so squirmy, that she would much rather be on her belly so that she can crawl around. She doesn't quite know yet how to transition from sitting up on her butt to getting down onto her stomach so that she can crawl.
- Diaper changes. Same squirmy reason as above.

She also is starting to get a little more separation anxiety and shows a stronger preference for being with me over anyone else. She gets sad if she sees me and then I disappear.


I'll leave you with her official eight-month photos, as well as some others from the past month.

She's getting more expressive!

At our friend Owen's first birthday

Christmas morning: